1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications devices and, more particularly, to graphical user interfaces.
2. General Background
Presently, users of portable and wireless devices can navigate through a series of menu screens in order to access device functions. The menu screens are typically presented to users in sequence, one screen at a time, as users select individual graphical user interface (GUI) menus, or menu items, called “widgets”. Because wireless device displays are relatively small (and also because the devices themselves are small and self-contained), widgets, menus, or objects are typically selected by a directional navigation key or similar device, rather than by a type of graphical input device that is more commonly used with larger systems, such as a stylus, mouse, or the like.
Additional functions may be carried out by statically or dynamically labeled “soft keys” whose functions can change according to the context of menus and items a user is accessing. For example, a user might scroll to a menu entitled “Buddy List”, which would become the “point of focus”, meaning that invoking a function (by, for example, pressing a soft key) would cause a program or routine invoked by a soft key to act on the Buddy List menu, rather than on other menus that are not “in focus.” Typically, a particular menu or menu item that is in focus is differentiated from other menus by visual cues, such as outlining, or by otherwise changing visual attributes of the background and/or the text for the item that is in focus.
When using a navigation key to navigate a vertically oriented set of menus and menu items, for example, pressing the “down” arrow of a 4-way navigation key (i.e., a key with 4 directional arrows) may move the point of focus to a menu or item below the previously focused one (just as pressing the up arrow will highlight a menu above the previous menu), and pressing a “select” or “OK” soft key or dedicated key will select the highlighted menu and cause the device to perform an action in response to the selection. Such an action could include displaying a drop-down list of menu items associated with the selected menu.
Navigating through a series of menus and menu items associated with menus on a typical mobile station or other portable device can require numerous repetitions of scrolling to menus using a navigation key, selecting a menu using a soft key, scrolling to a menu item associated with the selected menu, and then selecting or activating the menu item using a soft key. Yet an additional repetition of such scrolling and selecting may be required if the selected menu item has subordinate items or actions associated with it. In such a system, a relatively large number of keystrokes may be required even if certain functions are performed far more frequently than others via the user interface.
In addition to necessitating a relatively high number of keystrokes, navigating typical interfaces one menu screen at a time requires users to remember where they are and where they would like to go in order to use the device. Thus, a user interface that presents more information in an intuitive manner, that provides a multi-element display, and that allows users to access and use a device's features with fewer keystrokes, is desired.